The Power of Packaging: 1987 Jinx

It’s International Women’s Day, and you don’t have to look far in the GI Joe mythos to find characterizations of strong and capable women. Scarlett, Lady Jaye, Cover Girl, and Jinx were on equal footing with their male teammates, and I’m glad to have been exposed to them as a boy. Yes, I bought all the “girl” figures as a kid, and didn’t feel weird about it. Maybe it goes back to Princess Leia. So here’s to the past, present and future female characters that break molds.

Jinx was a welcome sight in the ’87 series, and its crazy to think that there hadn’t been a Joe labeled as a ninja after Storm Shadow made his debut.

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Happy International Women’s Day to all of the ladies. By the way, great figure, but, I only wish that the uniform had been painted exactly like how it was drawn in the 87 movie. Also, a removable mask, though I’m not sure what kind of material it would have been made of back then, but, it would have made this figure even better. By now in 2018, I’m wondering how many female characters(both good and bad) exist in G.I. Joe today, but have not had their action figure made yet. And to think that back in those days there were only four female Joes, one female Cobra(the Baroness), and one female Dreadnok(Zarana). And yet, the Hasbro folks had the molds of all of those figures back in the early 90’s, and they made the decision to just sit on those molds, rather than doing repaints of them, and selling them. They could have easily made the DIC episodes repaints of Scarlet, Lady Jaye, the Baroness, and Zarana, and made some money from them. But instead, they missed a huge opportunity. I would have bought those DIC repaints in a heartbeat back in those days. Believe me. I would not have cared that those were female figures, I would have bought all of them. Oh, well. What a great opportunity the Hasbro folks missed.

It does seem like a missed opportunity back in the original toy line to not include one of the women characters in Tiger Force, Slaughter’s Marauders, etc. All I can think is that despite what some of us fans thought of them, female action figures just mustn’t have sold as well. If they did sell better, I’m sure we would’ve seen more. Though they released one for each year of figures from ’82 to ’87. Personally, I would accept any and all G.I. Joe figures back then.

I never did get the idea that action figures of women were only for girls, ESPECIALLY in G.I. Joe. Scarlett has deadly weapons stashed on every part of her body, and Jinx is a freakin’ ninja. Any dude who has issues with badasses like that needs to question his priorities.

Speaking for myself, when I was a kid, I owned most of the female Joe characters, and they fought right alongside the men. It never occurred to me to think of them as girl toys — girl toys didn’t usually drive missile tanks, in my experience.

Right, and also Hasbro was focus group and marketing happy, so when they decided that female figures didn’t sell enough units for them, they stopped making them. I recall former Hasbro manager Kirk Bozigian said they’d pitch at least one new female a year and the final decision makers would always shoot them down…until ninja force Scarlett got approved. The second Baroness finally got approved then the line got cancelled.

Yes, I bought all the “girl” figures as a kid, and didn’t feel weird about it.

I only ever had two (Baroness and Jinx, coincidentally), and the only use I had for them was trying to convince my female cousins to play Joes rather than “house” when they/I came to visit. It never worked, either.

I did have all those female figures back in the day. Though some by happenstance, not because I wanted them specifically. Lady Jaye I wanted because she had the cool javelin, Baroness I wanted for being a major Cobra character, Covergirl I guess I wanted, but really the Wolverine was the draw, Scarlett was a miscellaneous gift, I forget why I picked out Zarana at the time, but when I bought Jinx, I bought her because “GI Joe Ninja!, Yay!” … I didn’t realize until I got home and opened it that it was a female character! (The movie had not been shown yet).